YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Yellowstone National Park plans to replace dozens of decades-old trailers used by park workers, part of an initiative to upgrade employee housing.
About half of the Yellowstone’s 800 employees live in park housing, according to park spokeswoman Morgan Warthin. She described the quality of the accommodations as “fair to poor.”
Over the next two years, park administrators plan to replace 64 trailers built between 1960 and 1983 with cabin-style modular houses. The number of new houses has not been determined. They would be placed in already-developed areas.
The park also plans to add new housing, rehabilitate historic homes in Fort Yellowstone and other areas, and upgrade 150 non-trailer housing units, including with new flooring and better insulation and heating systems.
Warthin told Montana Public Radio that there’s not enough housing, and the current housing crunch hurts workforce recruitment as park visitation has jumped 45 percent since the year 2000.
Costs for the work will run into the tens of millions of dollars, with funding coming from 2020 federal appropriations legislation, Yellowstone administrators said.